Impact of land degradation on communities of kyegegwa town council, Kyegegwa district.

Abstract

The study assessed the impacts of land degradation on communities of Kyegegwa town council in Kyegegwa district. The overall objective was to assess the impacts of land degradation on the livelihood of people in Kyegegwa town council. The study was based on primary data collected through use of questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and administered to the randomly sampled respondents in villages of Kibambali, Musabwe, Kibira, Nkaaka, Kyamutagobwa, and Kasambya in Kyegegwa town council. The study was descriptive and cross sectional and used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to establish the magnitude of land degradation. The methods of data collection used were questionnaires with both open and close ended questions. Semi structured interviews from a sample of sixty respondents were conducted and analyzed using chi-square tests and correlation statistics in SPSS and Excel program. The results are presented as frequencies, tables, pie charts and bar graphs. Findings indicate five major causes of land degradation; poor farming methods, over application of fertilizers, deforestation, swamp reclamation, change in climate which are basically driven by farming. Areas with destructed vegetation are prone to soil erosion and swamps are exposed to toxicity from agrochemicals which change the system. This creates concern to the government to come up with policies and laws to govern the use of land resources. Community members respond by planting trees, reduce the rate of cutting trees down, resort to appropriate application of fertilizers so as to increase yield, avoiding cultivation in swamps, planting elephant grass for their animals, deep ploughing adopting alternative businesses. Basing on the findings its recommended that the government officials should show flexibility by reaching down to the swamps in deep villages to emphasize the avoidance of planting rice and sugarcanes, cabbages in swamps as that leads to swamp / wetland destruction as the people there tend to freely cultivate there with an excuse that the uplands are dry so the government can sensitize the public and elaborate more on the meanings of various policies so as to avoid ignorance and resistance from communities to following the guidelines in them.